


Unplanned and Unprepared

by ssrhpurgatory



Series: Synchronicity Fractals [3]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, One night stand leads to consequences, Phone Sex, Second Chances, Strangers to Lovers, Unplanned Pregnancy, disaster bisexuals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:27:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29382054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Two and a half months ago, Rosemary Epps had a one-night stand with a man she'd never met while they were both stuck in the airport due to snow. Now, she's realized that there were consequences... and the fact that she keeps thinking about keeping this unexpected pregnancy means she should probably try to hunt down the father.If only she'd remembered to get more than his first name...One of three potential and non-overlapping sequels to Synchronicity.
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character
Series: Synchronicity Fractals [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2126490





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Synchronicity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28371990) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory). 



> I haven't finished this yet but it's looking like it'll be long enough to need chapters, so I'm just going to put those in from the start.

It had been two and a half months since Rosemary had had an entirely uncharacteristic one-night stand with a stranger in an airport and had said goodbye to him without getting his number or his last name.

And it had been one week since she’d realized that her rash behavior had resulted in... consequences.

At the time, it had only seemed inevitable that she and Alexander would part ways without giving each other some certain way of finding one another again. It had felt like just one of those crazy things that happen from time to time, the sort of thing that felt like it would leave a profound impact in the moment but which always ended up mostly forgotten aside from a fond memory or two.

But pregnancy would definitely have a long-lasting impact, even if—even _when_ , she scolded herself—she terminated.

It had been her own damn fault. She’d known that Alexander had been inside her unprotected, even if it had only been a few moments, even if he hadn’t come in her. But it had happened at the beginning of their night together, a forgettable incident in the face of the next several hours, so much so that it hadn’t even occurred to her to pick up some Plan B the next day. And that had, apparently, been all it took.

Her mother laughed at her when Rosemary phoned her up with the news. “Warned you to keep an IUD in until you hit menopause, didn’t I?”

“Not exactly helpful now, thank you, mother.” Given how seldom she managed to find the time to hook up with _anyone_ and how often those partners were women, she hadn’t considered other methods of contraception a priority. An oversight she was now regretting, even if it always hurt like hell to get a new IUD in.

“Huh.” Her mother sniffed judgmentally. “You going to keep it, then?”

“I... I’m not sure.” She was certain about getting rid of it... until she wasn’t. Certain it was just the hormones messing her up... until she thought about the fact that she was getting old enough she might not have another chance at this, partner or no. And then it all became fuzzy and complicated and far too difficult to weigh all the pros and cons in a levelheaded fashion.

“Don’t know why you bothered calling me up if you weren’t going to keep it,” Abigail Epps said with another judgmental sniff. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll give you a tip: the first three months with you were the worst, but I could always keep down rice cakes.” And then, with a click, she hung up, leaving Rosemary alone with her thoughts.

Her thoughts and her queasy stomach, the latter of which had been the reason she’d figured out what was going on. Her periods had gotten infrequent enough these days that missing one or two wasn’t all that unusual, but after a bout of vomiting she hadn’t been able to attribute to food poisoning, it had finally occurred to her to take a pregnancy test. And, lo and behold...

She’d get some rice cakes. And the reason she was feeling queasy would be gone soon. And everything would be fine.

Except it wouldn’t be fine, would it? Because there was some small part of her wondering if she could make this work. Because there was some small part of her remembering that night, remembering Alexander’s wistfulness as they’d talked about how nice it would be to have a second person around to lighten the load.

But even if she _could_ find him—and that wasn’t at all a certainty, because by now she’d ruled out every Alexander with a Russian surname who worked in biochem or micro research anywhere in this country, and had moved on to all the other Alexanders—who was to say that he’d want anything to do with _this_ situation? There was a massive difference between wanting a spouse and wanting an infant. The idea of doing it alone was daunting; the idea of co-parenting with a man she’d only met once was even more so, even if they _had_ hit it off surprisingly well in the short amount of time they’d spent together.

So she should just get the abortion and forget all about it. That would be the simplest thing. And if, by some chance, Alexander found out about it, he would thank her for making the right choice.

Wouldn’t he?

Alexander stared at the email in his inbox in shock.

Oh, there was nothing truly shocking about the contents of it—it was hardly long enough to contain anything shocking to begin with—but the fact that it was from a woman named Rosemary Epps, asking if he might, by any chance, be the same Alexander she’d met in the Detroit airport this past Christmas? That was enough to give his system quite the shock indeed.

Of course, he had already figured out who she was. There were only a handful of women named Rosemary working in micro research in the country, and she was the only Black one. And then he had felt guilty for looking her up, for finding out her last name when she had not given it freely, for finding her work contact information when they had decided not to exchange numbers. Hunting her down when they had agreed that they had no future together had been unambiguous stalking, and the surge of leftover guilt he felt from doing that almost made him delete her email without responding.

But he had been regretting that choice not to keep in touch with her ever since he had left her behind. He had been able to tell at the time that at least part of her hesitation had been because she was not certain of his reaction; if he had not allowed his own worries and hesitation to show, that moment would have gone differently, he knew it. Of course, he had refused to let himself imagine what might have happened if it had, knowing that such imaginings would only bring him more pain, but surely it would have been better than these three months of silence, of knowing how to find her and not daring to reveal to her that he knew, would it not?

So now that she had reached out to him, he couldn’t waste the opportunity, no matter how embarrassed he was by his stalking.

He just didn’t know how to respond.

But this _was_ his work email, so he should probably keep it brief. And professional. Utterly professional.

“Yes. It is good to hear from you,” he muttered to himself as he typed the words. Utterly insipid, he knew it, but he could think of nothing better. He added a “I hope you are well,” and then, feeling as if he was overreaching, he added a “Would you like to get coffee some time?” at the end. But she had sent it from her own work account, and the signature had her work address and phone number in it, so surely she could expect him to deduce that she worked close enough to have that coffee without going out of her way. And she would be expecting him to make some overture, wouldn’t she? Because if she weren’t, why had she bothered hunting him down?

He squelched the urge to close it with a “Love, Sasha” and ended with an impersonal “-Alexander”and the auto-generated email signature instead.

And then, before he could lose his courage, he hit send.

He spent the next hour trying and mostly failing not to check his email every five minutes. He spent the next hour after that rethinking every letter of the email he had sent her. But surely an invitation to have coffee was unobjectionable. That was the sort of thing one did with casual acquaintances, wasn’t it? Or had it come across as a request for a date?

Or, he found himself thinking after he came back from lunch and there was still no response, had she taken it as a request for _more_ than a date? Was “would you like to get coffee some time” code for “want to hook up again” when you’d already had a one-night stand with someone? Not that he would say no if she did, of course, but it certainly hadn’t been the intention behind him asking that.

Fortunately, a response popped up just then in his inbox, preventing him from further catastrophizing.

**_Coffee would be nice. You free on Saturday?_ **

Alexander let out a sigh of relief and started scripting his response.


	2. Chapter 2

In the days between when she had finally located Alexander and the day of their coffee date, Rosemary changed her mind about what she wanted to do about this whole situation a dozen times over, and a dozen times more for good measure.

So much depended on how Alexander reacted to her news. She could plan and plan, think her way through possible contingencies, but until she knew what he wanted—if he wanted anything at all from her, which wasn’t a certainty—she wouldn’t be able to make any plans that would stick.

At least he _had_ responded to her. And he’d been the one to suggest they meet up, too, though she was trying not to make too much of that. Surely he had just intended to be polite. And just as surely that politeness would disappear, when it became clear _why_ she had contacted him.

She was so nervous that she got to the cafe they’d agreed upon with half an hour to spare, even after she had ordered her decaf and settled down at a table in line of sight of the door. When Alexander arrived five minutes later, he caught her eye and gave her a rueful grin.

“I see I am not only one who is overly punctual,” he said a few minutes later as he joined her, a to-go cup in his hand. “Did you want me to pretend I did not see you yet for the next twenty minutes?”

It was barely a joke, but it broke through her awkwardness and made her laugh. “Oh, sit down, you.”

Alexander gave her a wan smile and sat down across from her. Clearly he was still feeling awkward himself. “So. Uh.” His eyes darted up to meet hers and then away. “You, uh. You look good.”

Oh, lord, this was unbearable. Might as well get it out all at once. Like ripping a bandaid off, right? “I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations?” he said, sounding confused. And then, clearly, she saw him realize why she had told _him_ this information, his eyes widening in shock. “Oh. _Oh_.” He met her eye. “You are certain?”

“That I’m pregnant? Yes. That it’s yours? Well, it’s either that or I’ve got a case of immaculate conception on my hands, in which case I suspect the actual pregnancy is the least of my worries.”

“I see.” A little frown creased his brow. “What do you intend to do?”

Rosemary sighed. Well, he sure wasn’t making this any easier. “I... I don’t know,” she confessed. “I keep telling myself that I’m going to get an abortion, but...” she felt her cheeks flush, hot and embarrassed. “I’m old enough that I might not get another chance at this sort of thing, so it just... it has me thinking. But I don’t know... it’s not that I can’t do this on my own, you understand, and I definitely am not going to be going after you for child support, but...”Alexander was still staring blankly at her. Rosemary let out a sigh and pressed onward. This was going worse than she’d feared. “I guess I just... just wanted to give you the option to be around for it. If you wanted to. If I keep it.”

Alexander shook himself out of his daze. He didn’t know how to respond to any of this, but he owed her some kind of response. It couldn’t have been easy for her to decide to tell him about this when she knew so little about him and had only met him once before, even if she had trusted him enough then to share a bed with him. And to share the actions that had resulted in her current predicament.

“If—“ he began, but his voice came out as a high-pitched squeak. He paused and cleared his throat. “ _If_ you keep it—and that part is entirely your decision, I would not dare impose a pregnancy on you that you do not want—I...” he trailed off with a sigh and fiddled with his coffee cup. He would want to be involved, of course he would. But he was also acutely aware of the fact that they were strangers to one another, and that they might find they had very little in common—apart from their shared vocation—once they learned more of one another.

“You?” She prompted. Her voice was trembling, and he rushed to reassure her.

“I would like to be involved, but I would never wish to impose on you. I would like to get to know you better, and to be a part of the baby’s life, but if you find having me around difficult…” Alexander let out a frustrated noise, annoyed with his own inability to put words to how he felt. “I am putting this poorly. Just… know that I am here, no matter what path you choose, to whatever extent you feel comfortable with.”

“That… that sounds good. I know this was a lot to dump on you.” Her gaze was fixed on her own to-go cup, her thumb picking at the cardboard sleeve. “And if you change your mind…”

“I am not going to,” he said firmly.

She flashed a warning look up at him. “ _If_ you change your mind, I won’t blame you for it. I know I’m not always the easiest person to get along with.”

Alexander couldn’t help laughing at that, a harsh, startled bark of laughter that made her eyes flash back up to his again, wide and startled. “Well, I do not know that.” He reached across the table and placed his hands over hers, where they were still cupped around her to-go cup, squeezing them lightly. “And perhaps you will find that I am the difficult one to get along with. But should we not see whether we can get along before proclaiming that we are difficult?”

She let out a strained little laugh of her own that had no humor in it, but at least the clearly visible distress on her face eased a little. “Okay.” She took a deep breath and released it on a sigh. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment next week, to see… well, just to see. But I think, if it’s viable…”

“Feel free to call me if you need support. Any time. Not just if you are keeping it. If you choose to… if it becomes necessary to… well. I will be there, if you need someone to talk to.” He squeezed her hands once more and then released her, retreating back to his side of the table.

The corner of Rosemary’s mouth quirked up into a lopsided sort of smile. “Thank you. It’s more than I hoped for, honestly.”

Alexander felt a sudden rush of warmth for this woman, for the straightforward way she had told him that he did not need to involve himself at all in this despite her own anxiety, for the fact that she was more worried about his feelings than about her own.

He would just have to worry about her feelings for her, then.

If she would let him.


	3. Chapter 3

Rosemary came out of her appointment with her primary care doctor with the news that the fetus appeared to be viable, a referral to an obstetrician, and just as many worries as she’d had before the appointment.

They were different ones now, at least. Worries like “what _is_ my company’s family leave policy like, anyway?” and “will the morning sickness _actually_ stop at three months, or is it just going to be like this the entire time?”

Oh, and “What am I going to do about Alexander?”

They had parted on Saturday with a reassurance from him that she could call or text him at any time, about anything, but she was still hesitant. Not because she didn’t know him well yet—though that was part of it, wasn’t it? The fact that she’d had this man inside her but knew next to nothing about him still wore on her—but because she was worried about imposing on him.

Fortunately, while she was cleaning up after a late dinner she’d only picked at and dithering about whether or not she should tell him how her appointment had gone, a text arrived from him.

**_How was your appointment?_ **

**_Good_** _,_ she responded. She leaned against her counter, chewed her lower lip as she composed a second text. **_Everything looks good for this stage in the pregnancy. I’m making an appointment with an obstetrician._**

 ** _So you are continuing with the pregnancy?_** came his almost immediate response.

**_I think so. Assuming nothing goes horribly wrong over the next six months_.**

Three dots lingered on the screen for a long moment. She wondered if he was composing an exceptionally lengthy text or was simply thinking and re-thinking what he wanted to send her. Finally, though, the text appeared.

**_Would it be too forward if I asked you out on a date?_ **

She laughed as she responded. **_Mm, I don’t know. It’s not like I’m having your baby or anything._**

**_…that was a joke, right?_ **

She laughed again and pressed the call button, abandoning her dishes in the sink and making her way over to the couch in what passed for a living room in her apartment. “Yes, Sasha, that was a joke,” she said when he picked up.

“I thought so, but it is not always easy to read tone from texts,” he responded in that low, Russian-accented voice of his. The sound of it sent a delighted shiver down her spine, and she was suddenly reminded of how very delicious that night of giving in to their shared lust had been.

And then she shook her head to clear it. Just the onset of pregnancy hormones, probably. The first time she’d slept with him had resulted in her current predicament; surely she didn’t want a repeat performance, did she? She wanted to get to know him, not fuck him into incoherence.

“So, was that a yes on the date?” he asked, his voice sending another shiver down her spine.

Of course, there was nothing preventing her from getting to know him _and_ fucking him into incoherence. And it wasn’t like she could get knocked up twice.

“How about,” she purred, dropping her voice deliberately into the low, raspy timbre that always got her the unsolicited suggestion that she’d make an excellent phone sex operator, “you bring some dinner over here Friday night and we see where things go from there?”

Alexander let out a breathless laugh, sounding as if all the air had rushed out of his lungs while listening to her. “I, uh,” he began squeakily. He cleared his throat and his voice dropped back into its proper register. “I think I could manage that.”

“Oh, good,” she murmured, still using her bedroom voice.

He let out another breathless laugh. “You really do not play fair, do you?”

“Oh, don’t tell me _that_ was enough to give you a hard-on, darling.” The teasing words slipped out before she could think better of them. Though perhaps she should have expected this. Her airport liaison with Alexander had been a brief shower in the middle of an extended drought. It had reminded her just how nice it was to be skin to skin with another person, and then it had been snatched away as quickly as it had come, and it was only now that Alexander was within reach again that she realized how much she’d been craving more of the same.

“Afraid so,” he said, sounding almost ashamed of himself. “I have not… well, let me just say that my mind has been playing regular re-runs of my memories of that hotel room over the past three months.”

“And providing a much-needed workout for your right hand, I suppose.”

“Left, actually.” He cleared his throat again. “Are we about to…?”

Rosemary sank back against her couch cushions and trailed her free hand down the curve of her stomach, which was only showing the barest outward sign of the changes taking place inside her. “I’m game for phone sex if you are. God knows these pregnancy hormones have me all worked up.”

“Right. Right. I, uh… Let me just get… settled.” There was the sound of movement, of the shuffle of clothing moved aside, and of Alexander’s breath, hard against the speaker of his phone. “There.”

“Comfortable?”

“Very.”

“So. What would you want to do with me if you had me there in front of you?”

“If I say put my cock in you, you will scold me, yes?”

She laughed. “I _do_ tend to like a little bit of foreplay first.” Not that she had any need of it right now; when she worked her hand down under the waistbands of her leggings and panties and between her legs, she found herself hot and slick to the touch. Whether that was because of pregnancy hormones or just because she was hot for Alexander in particular, she didn’t know… and she didn’t care to consider that particular train of thought more thoroughly at the moment.

“I would like to kiss you again,” he said, his voice almost solemn.

“You like kissing me?”

“After we said goodbye on Saturday, I kept thinking I should have asked you if I could kiss you again.” He let out a wry little laugh. “I think I have been missing it.”

So was she all of a sudden, remembering the hot press of his lips against hers from that night with acute longing. “I think I’ve missed it too.” And then she laughed. “And this is a very poor attempt at phone sex.”

“Mm. I would not know. I must rely on your expertise.”

So he hadn’t done this before. Good to know. She’d make certain to prompt him, then. “So, you want to kiss me. Anywhere in particular?”

“On the mouth, to start. And you let out this lovely little whimper when I nibbled your earlobe—“ Rosemary found herself whimpering in reaction to the memory his words elicited, and he let out a dark chuckle and added, “Yes, that one.”

“Anywhere else?” she asked breathlessly.

“Would probably work my way down your neck“—she gasped softly at that memory, imagining a repeat of something that had left her with a hickey the next day—“and into your cleavage,” he continued, clearly still capable of rational thought in a way she no longer was. “That is, until…” he trailed off on a harsh puff of breath.

All right, perhaps he wasn’t _entirely_ rational at the moment.

“Until?” she prompted him breathlessly.

“Until I manage to get your bra off, of course,” he growled.

Rosemary had started working her now-slick fingers against the hard nubbin of her clit, but at that she had to tilt her head to one side and prop the phone against her shoulder in order to free her other hand. Her nipples definitely needed some attention, poking hard and sensitive against the lace of her bra. “And now that you’ve gotten some foreplay under your belt, you’re going to fuck me, right?” she asked, almost begging, desperate for him despite the physical distance between them.

“No,” he growled, his own breath coming hard and harsh. “I would want to get down between your thighs and kiss you there, too. Extensively.”

“ _Fuck_.” That had been enough to send her over the edge, apparently. That, and her memory of the way he’d gone down on her that night together in the hotel room, like a man savoring a feast where every dish was a new favorite. “ _God_ , I want your cock in me,” she managed to rasp breathlessly.

There were a few more panting breaths from Alexander, and then a low, guttural sound that she knew from experience heralded his own orgasm. In the silence that followed—broken only by their panting attempts to start breathing properly again—Rosemary picked her phone up off her shoulder and held it to her ear.

“So, Sasha darling, was it good for you?”

Another of those breathless laughs answered her. “Are you certain you will not have time to get together until Friday?” he asked mournfully.

“Afraid so,” she responded, equally mournful. “I need to put in some overtime in order to catch up after morning sickness spent two months kicking my ass.”

He sighed. “Ah, well. Friday, then.”

“It’s only two more days.”

“That is true,” he said, sounding a bit more cheerful. And then, hesitantly, as if he was not certain whether he should say it, he added, “I do not intend to use you just for sex, you know. I want… I want to get to know you beyond that.”

“And I want to get to know you too,” she reassured him. “And there’s plenty of time for that. But... I think I want to make time for pleasure, too.”

“Is that your common sense talking, or those pregnancy hormones?” he asked, a thread of wry humor in his voice.

“Maybe a bit of both.” She sounded more certain than she felt. “I’ll find it much easier to concentrate on getting to know you if I’m not spending the entire time thinking about fucking you six ways to Sunday, after all.”

He laughed. “Oh, very well. I suppose I cannot argue that point.”

“Well, good.” Rosemary lifted her phone from her ear to check the time and sighed. “I should probably start getting ready for bed. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

“Sleep well,” he said softly.

“You too.” She hung up before she could be tempted by the prospect of lingering a little longer, of murmuring a dozen and a half soft goodbyes littered with endearments. After all, she didn’t know him well enough yet for any of the endearments to have any truth to them, and the way she was feeling right now it’d just end up transitioning to another round of phone sex, anyway.

Though truth be told, an evening of soft goodbyes and unearned endearments sounded far, far nicer than it should. At least, if it were Alexander she was exchanging them with.


	4. Chapter 4

Alexander showed up at Rosemary’s apartment on Friday evening with a paper bag full of Thai takeout tucked under his arm and a strange, humming tension that was either anxiety or anticipation filling his chest.

Probably a good bit of both, if he were being honest with himself. Anxiety about saying or doing something that would give this woman a disgust of him, and anticipation of… well, anticipation of fact that he would almost certainly be getting laid tonight. He had gone for longer periods of time without having sex, but suddenly those three months since he had first met Rosemary felt like a barren eternity.

He had made an opportunity to talk over the whole situation with Isabel during the days between when he had last talked with Rosemary and now, in part because he had needed an outside opinion about whether his choice to support a woman he barely knew through her pregnancy with their child was as completely crazy as it seemed, and because Isabel had always been the friend most willing to call him out when he was making terrible decisions. Unfortunately, she had been singularly unhelpful on this occasion.

“I don’t know, Sasha,” she had said with a shrug after he had spilled the whole tale out and asked what she thought. “Though this does explain a few things.”

“Like what?” he had snapped back, irritated by her lack of opinion when she always had an opinion on everything.

“Like the way you were acting right after Christmas. Renée thought you might have met someone in Russia who broke it off because they didn’t want to do the long distance thing. I thought it was nonsense, but I also thought you’d tell me if something like that happened.” Isabel had let out a long-suffering sigh. “She’s going to be so damn insufferable when she finds out about this.”

“Do not tell her,” he had cut in then, urgent. “Not yet, at least. I do not know...” He did not know whether Rosemary would _ever_ want more from him than sex, and the fact that he was hoping for more was still a tender, precious secret that felt too delicate to expose to the scrutiny of his friends. “I just want to keep this between the two of us for now, all right?”

Isabel had fixed him with a piercing look at that. “Wow, okay. Now it all makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“You _like_ this woman.”

And no matter how many times he had protested that he did not know Rosemary well enough to know whether he _liked_ her, it seemed as if it had only increased Isabel’s certainty that Alexander had some extremely deep feelings indeed where Rosemary was concerned.

If only he could be as certain about what he felt.

Still, when Rosemary opened her apartment door and beamed that bright and startling smile of hers up at him, Alexander’s heart thudded hard in his chest, bringing with it a sudden longing to see her smile up at him like that every day. And when she took the bag of takeout from him and tugged him down into a warm, open-mouthed kiss by way of greeting, his ability to think logically about any of this fizzled out like a wet match.

She released him after a moment, from the embrace and from the kiss, a smile still playing at the corner of her mouth. “Mm, yeah. I _did_ miss that.”

He could only gape at her open-mouthed, glad she had taken the bag containing their dinner from him because he almost certainly would have dropped it.

“You coming in?” she asked, stepping back into her apartment and leaving the door open behind her.

The entire world around him had blanked out the moment she had pulled him down to her for that kiss, and he had not realized that they had still been in the hallway for it. He scurried in after her and locked her apartment door behind him before turning to look around curiously.

Judging by the size of the main room, which was kitchen and living room combined, it was a small apartment. Rosemary had bustled over to the kitchen half of it and was unpacking the bag their dinner had come in onto a small round table. The space between them was filled by a TV on a stand, a innocuous wooden coffee table... and a purple velveteen couch.

The couch made him want to laugh. It was so very much like its owner, plump and bright-colored and making no excuses for existing in its current form. And then he glanced up at the art hung over it, and he did laugh.

Rosemary glanced up from where she was fussing over place settings. “Was that for the porn painting or for the pear?”

“Porn painting?” He raised a dubious eyebrow at her and examined the larger of the two prints on her wall. There was nothing porn-like about it. It looked like a print of a perfectly serviceable abstract painting. “I think I must be missing something.”

She joined him, sliding an arm around his waist and nestling against his side like she belonged there. Of course, he had unconsciously lifted his arm to make space for her and had wrapped it around her shoulders once she was settled against him, so perhaps she _did_ belong there.

“After I bought it, I kept seeing it in the backgrounds of porn films,” she said.

“And the pear?”

She laughed. “I thought the meme was funny and hunted down the original artist. It’s a good conversation starter, you’ve got to admit.”

He wondered what sort of conversations usually got started by a drawing of a pear with teeth. He turned towards her to ask, but found himself face-to-face with her and completely incapable of getting any words out.

So he kissed her instead.

Fortunately, she kissed him back. And it was like that night in the hotel room again, hot and needy and so, so good.

But their dinner had to be getting cold. “We should—“ he began.

“Go shove everything in my fridge and see if my kitchen table holds up for a quickie?” she suggested hopefully.

He laughed breathlessly. “The couch would probably be more comfortable.”

“So would my bed, but if I get you in there I’m worried I’ll keep you there for the rest of the night, and we should probably eat dinner eventually,” she said.

He brushed a kiss to the tip of her nose. “I will bring you dinner in bed after first round, if you like.”

She let out a crack of laughter, and then tugged him after her into the kitchen, where they hastily split and downed the egg rolls that had been their appetizer after a brief discussion about how they never tasted quite right if you needed to reheat them, shoved everything else into the fridge, and washed their hands. And then she tugged him into a little hall off her living room, pointed out which door was the bathroom and which was a linen closet, and pulled him into her bedroom.

Her duvet cover was patterned in bright, sunshiny colors, and flung aside as quickly as their clothing. When he followed her into bed and she pulled him over her, all of his joints went weak and watery, leaving him trembling and desperate for her body, warm against his.

By the way she kissed him, she was just as desperate. He ground his cock against her and she let out a little whimper, wrapping her legs up around his hips, and while he had meant to spend some more time of foreplay it was clear that it wouldn’t be necessary at the moment. She was already hot and slick against him... and she _had_ called this a quickie. Perhaps she would not mind if they got right to it.

“Condoms?” he panted against her neck as she ground her cunt in little circles against him.

“Bedside drawer,” she said. “Or...”

He lifted his head to look at her. “Or?”

Her already dark cheeks flushed deeper, and her eyes darted away from his in clear embarrassment, an amusing reaction from a woman who already had him naked and between her thighs. “Well, it’s not like I can get any more knocked up.”

“You are certain?”

“You’re still clean, yeah?” At his nod she added, “Well, so am I. So, if you want to...”

He did not need any more encouragement than that. Not with her cunt hot against him, not with her blushing and eager in his arms. One brief adjustment and his next thrust buried him deep inside her. She let out a guttural groan and moved her hips against his, and he sank just that little bit deeper, a feeling that had him biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. The sharp shock of pain bought him some extremely necessary control as he began moving in her, but even so, he knew he would be quick.

It was _not_ an elegant encounter. It was fast and frantic, the pair of them searching for oblivion together along the swiftest path possible. He only just managed to hold out long enough to stroke her to an orgasm of her own with his fingers and then he was lost as well, collapsing to her chest in an overwhelmed stupor once the first spasms of his own climax had abated.

Rosemary didn’t seem to mind, at least. She held him to her and pressed soft kisses to cheek as he tried to remember how to breathe properly again.

After a moment he let out a huff of laughter. “Told myself I would not have sex with you again right away, but here we are.”

Rosemary laughed as well, an indelicate little snort that he found impossibly endearing. “Whatever for?”

He lifted himself from her chest, reaching for the tissue box on her bedside table. “Thought it would be respectful.” He offered the tissue box to her before taking a few for himself as he began the delicate process of disentangling himself from her without leaving a mess on her sheets. “I feel too old for this,” he admitted, flopping at her side and nuzzling her shoulder. “Have not been this focused on sex since I was in my early twenties.”

Rosemary’s hand tugged his face to hers for a kiss, soft and sweet now that the urgency had worn off. “I don’t mind it,” she said, pressing another soft kiss to his lips. “It’s nice being wanted.”

It _was_ nice to be wanted. She made it clear that she wanted him back every time she looked at him, and that awareness, that instant mutual attraction... well, it was intoxicating. _She_ was intoxicating, and right now he wanted to be drunk on her forever.

Her stomach chose that moment to growl, a loud, undignified rumble, as if her extremely human body was protesting the urge he felt to put her up on a pedestal and worship her like she was some kind of goddess. “And now, I think, it is time for dinner,” he said with a laugh.

Rosemary agreed.

For all his caution, they had left a wet spot on her bed, but Rosemary only smiled and said it would dry by the time they were ready to go to sleep. “And if not,” she said ruefully, “I’ll put a towel down. Goodness knows I should have before we got hot and heavy.”

“One good thing about condoms. Less mess.”

“Mm.” Her gaze went unfocused at that, as if she were considering dragging him back to bed right that minute.

“Dinner first,” he scolded.

She let out a laugh that was as guilty as the look on her face. “Was I that obvious?”

He nodded solemnly, and she laughed again.

“I see I’ll have a hard time getting anything past you,” she said, wrapping a robe she had pulled out of her closet around herself and heading towards her kitchen.

He threw on his undershirt and boxers and followed her. “Do you want to get things past me?” he asked dubiously, coming up behind her while she rummaged in her fridge and taking the plastic to-go containers from her as she pulled them out, setting them on the counter for her.

“Well, no,” she said with a laugh on her lips. She emerged from the fridge with the final container in her hands. “I’m just used to folks paying more attention to my tits than to what’s happening on my face when I’m naked. But you...” her cheeks flushed dark and she ducked her head to one side, clearly embarrassed once more. “You just seem to actually be looking at me properly,” she finished, the words half-mumbled. “It’s... it’s nice.”

He plucked the container out of her hands and transferred it to the counter as well. “Like I said, it is you I am here to get to know better. Not your body.” But he could not help but give her an appreciative look up and down; the robe she had put on was a lightweight, silky thing that left very little to the imagination. “Not just your body,” he amended.

Rosemary laughed, that little snort of a laugh that he found so endearing, and shooed him to one side so that she could get in her cabinets and pull out plates. “Enjoy it while it lasts. I’m pretty sure that once I start showing, there’s nowhere for things to go but out. I’m going to get _massive_.”

“Like I said. I am not here for _just_ your body.” He took one of the spoons she handed him and started portioning out rice and yellow curry for them both. “I… well.”

“What?” The word had a teasing tone to it, and she nudged him gently in the side with her elbow. “You sound like a teenaged boy trying to stammer his way around to saying he likes someone.”

“Well I do,” he said, indignant about being compared to a teenaged boy, but unable to meet her gaze all the same. “Perhaps it is all just the hormones, as you say, but I _do_ like you.” He heard a soft inhale from her, and finally turned his head in order to look at her, only to find a startled expression on her face. “Enough that I would want to get to know you better even if we had not found ourselves in this situation,” he added hoarsely, feeling it necessary to make it clear that it was friendship he wanted from her first.

“Well. That’s… that’s nice, then.” She swallowed hard. “I like you too, you know.”

“Good.” Alexander cleared his throat, which had grown tight with unexpected emotion. “Then let us have a nice dinner and get to know each other a little better, yes?”

“Sounds good.” But Rosemary went up on her toes to brush a kiss to his cheek first, a soft brush of lips that left him feeling far more heated in its wake than it had any right to.

It was far too soon to say whether he loved this woman, but he was beginning to think that it was inevitable that some day, he would.


End file.
